"When the Giants Come to Town..." is my blog intended to chronicle my thoughts on San Francisco Giants baseball. My special interest is in prospects and the farm system, but of course, will comment on all aspects of the San Francisco Giants. I will also comment on baseball in general, particularly from a fantasy baseball perspective. I hope you will find the site informative, and invite you to join in the discussion.

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Hot Stove Update: Mets Sign Todd Frazier

The slow FA market bit Todd Frazier hard. He was projected by MLBTR to get a 3 year/$33 M contract from someone, but yesterday settled with the Mets for 2 years/$17 M. Ouch! Now, before you go all THE GIANTS COULD HAVE...... Evan Longoria's hit on the Giants CBT is a lot less than $8.5 M THIS YEAR and THIS YEAR is apparently all the Giants care about in terms of the CBT. Of course, they are so close to the threshold now, it's anybody's guess whether they will actually stay under it or not and it's hard to see how going over by $1 is much better than going over by $10 M.

The Giants need dingers and Frazier would likely give them a lot more of those than Longoria, but there is also risk that the dingers would disappear in AT&T and they'd be left with a .220 BA and 15 dingers, but just for 2 years.

The biggest news out of this is the FA and stock market officially crashed on the same day. This signing is very bad news for the remaining FA's in the 2017-18 market.

A third Anon:Bruce and Frazier will be better FOR THE METS than Longoria and McCutchen would have been, and vice versa for the Giants.Comparisons are difficult but NY's improvement over 70-92 v SF's improvement over 64-98 will most likely depend on what the pitchers do.

Signing McCutchen over Bruce kept the Giants marginally in the race for Harper next year. Shedding Pence, McCutchen, Dyson, and Sandoval would be enough but there are scheduled raises (and reductions in $$ offsets on trades) that will squeeze the available funds, but over $30MM/year could be available -- but not with Bruce!

About Me

I grew up in Northern California near the Napa Valley. I got interested in baseball and the Giants by listening to Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons broadcast Giants games on KSFO. My early heros were Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Juan Marichal and a guy you don't always think of, Jim Ray Hart. When I got older and was in school and early career, I didn't have time to follow as closely, but I tried to look up their boxscores each day and catch an occasional game on TV. One habit I got into at an early age was looking up the stats of their minor league players in The Sporting News. That became more difficult as TSN moved away from comprehensive baseball coverage. Now, of course, technology and affluence has changed all that. The internet is teaming with farm system/minor league information as well as college and high school baseball. Satellite TV enables me to get most of the Giants games on TV. I'm married with 2 wonderful daughters, who like to watch games with me.